With its latest GeForce 384 series graphics drivers, NVIDIA quietly added DirectX 12 API support for GPUs based on its "Fermi" architecture, as discovered by keen-eyed users on the Guru3D Forums. These include the GeForce 400-series and 500-series graphics cards. The support appears to be sufficient to run today's Direct3D feature-level 12_0 games or applications, and completes WDDM 2.2 compliance for GeForce "Fermi" graphics cards on Windows 10 Creators Update (version 1703), which could be NVIDIA's motivation for extending DirectX 12 support to these 5+ year old chips. Whether they meet your games' minimum system requirements is an entirely different matter.

It's not 12_0 capable, it's 11_0 capable. The only thing that changed really is the fact that now it can run the API itself.
(for reference, even Kepler and Maxwell gen 1. are 11_0, not even 11_1 like GCN1 & Haswell/Broadwell, let alone 12_0 like GCN2-4 or 12_1 like GCN5 and Maxwell gen 2. & Pascal and Skylake/Kaby Lake)

edit:

RejZoR said:All GCN cards (HD7000 and above) had D3D_12_0 support from day 1 basically.

In addition to the feature level support, they can support variety of different Tiers on specific features.
As it stands today, GCN5 and Skylake/Kaby Lake have the most comprehensive support for D3D12 and it's FL12_1. (it is possible that GCN5 could actually surpass the Intels, but it all comes down to minimum precision - if it's FP16, they're the same, if it's FP10, it's the widest possible support you can have)

In addition to the feature level support, they can support variety of different Tiers on specific features.
As it stands today, GCN5 and Skylake/Kaby Lake have the most comprehensive support for D3D12 and it's FL12_1. (it is possible that GCN5 could actually surpass the Intels, but it all comes down to minimum precision - if it's FP16, they're the same, if it's FP10, it's the widest possible support you can have)

What are you calling Maxwell gen 1? Just the 750 and 750Ti?

On topic, this quiet Fermi rollout mystifies me. Why would Nvidia not tell Fermi owners? It makes no sense to release the capability and not publicize it.

I'm just running a GTX 460 1GB (I can OC it to GTX 470 territory, but who cares amirite?) and I really don't care, since most DX12 titles won't even be able to run at 30fps on low, unless you drop the resolution to stupid levels.

Why bother? Just so you can say you delivered on a promise that the majority of people forgot about? (Edit: So this was just put in without boasting about it, weird.)

EntropyZ said:I'm just running a GTX 460 1GB (I can OC it to GTX 470 territory, but who cares amirite?) and I really don't care, since most DX12 titles won't even be able to run at 30fps on low, unless you drop the resolution to stupid levels.

Why bother? Just so you can say you delivered on a promise that the majority of people forgot about? (Edit: So this was just put in without boasting about it, weird.)

As I posted above, DX12 code can and will degrade gracefully based on the feature level that is actually supported.
With this change, your card (I had one of those, too) will be able to run DX12 code, even if it will only use DX11 features. It's not a game changer, but a nice to have feature imho.